Court Limits Protection Against Improper Entry

Evidence found by police officers who enter a home to execute a search warrant without first following the requirement to "knock and announce" can be used at trial despite that constitutional violation, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
The 5-to-4 decision left uncertain the value of the "knock-and-announce" rule, which dates to 13th-century England as protection against illegal entry by the police into private homes.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, said that people subject to an improper police entry remained free to go to court and bring a civil rights suit against the police.
But Justice Stephen G. Breyer, writing for the dissenters, said the ruling "weakens, perhaps destroys, much of the practical value of the Constitution's knock-and-announce protection." He said the majority's reasoning boiled down to: "The requirement is fine, indeed, a serious matter, just don't enforce it."

This decision is another outrageous peek into what the new Court will bring to us in the coming years. You can't truly comprehend the gravity of the matter without reading the opinion and the dissent - the majority opinion is chock-full of anti-defendant, pro-police rhetoric, while the dissent tries to inject some reason (using, by the way, what has been settled reasoning for the past 45 years) into the debate. Silly dissenters, justice has no place on this Court!